bandwidth monitoring by IP ?

[chronodekar]

I need a way to track bandwidth usage by IP. Ours is a small office and I have the following equipment,

Linksys RV042
Linksys WRT54GL
Belkin F5D8236

We use the RV042 to connect to the internet from our ISP and its our DHCP server (the RV042 is also used for a VPN tunnel to another branch-office). I use the WRT54GL to provide Wifi to everyone (we all have laptops).

I did a LOT of searching and found these (among others),
Wallwatcher
MRTG
DD-WRT

For the life of me, I can't figure them out. Well, I kind-of get the idea behind DD-WRT, but I'm hesitant to flash my routers firmware. The warranty is important to me.

Ideally, I would love to get real-time bandwidth monitoring differentiated by IP. Is it possible with this equipment?

I'm running on Windows XP, but there is a Fedora system around, so if it comes to it, I guess I could use that.

-chronodekar

 

[RadiclDreamer]

With that low end equipment you arent going to be able to do this. If warranty is important and you dont want to flash to third party software you may just need to buy higher end professional equipment that is suited to the task without mods.

 

[JackMDS]

The warranty is important to me.

Then I guess it is down the line to what is more important, the function that you are looking for, or the insurance to $40 piece of plastic.

If $40 are more important to you, then it is you have to let go of the Bandwidth follow up because other solutions would cost hundreds $$.

.

 

[Zargon]

you can get a preflashed wRT54G for 55 bucks and setup rflow which I do and it works well. stupid comcast making me watch my traffic!

or http://www.hetos.de/bwlog.html

 

[chronodekar]

I was afraid of these kind of replies. What about just bandwidth monitoring through the RV042 only? Not per IP, but just the total overall? Is that possible?

Also, suppose that I bite the bullet and flash my firmware, can I put back the original one without problems or will it be lost forever?

-chronodekar

 

[RadiclDreamer]

I was afraid of these kind of replies. What about just bandwidth monitoring through the RV042 only? Not per IP, but just the total overall? Is that possible?

Also, suppose that I bite the bullet and flash my firmware, can I put back the original one without problems or will it be lost forever?

-chronodekar

Not familiar with the RV042 but many managed devices support this. Not sure if that model is managed or not.

As far as the flash is concerned, yes every model I've ever flashed to 3rd party would allow me to go back, save for some issues with vxworks models.

 

[chronodekar]

Not familiar with the RV042 but many managed devices support this. Not sure if that model is managed or not.

Any idea where I can get more information from ?

As far as the flash is concerned, yes every model I've ever flashed to 3rd party would allow me to go back, save for some issues with vxworks models.

Good to hear this. I just may take the plunge (if I can get my superiors to approve it).

-chronodekar

 

[Nothinman]

I was afraid of these kind of replies. What about just bandwidth monitoring through the RV042 only? Not per IP, but just the total overall? Is that possible?

Also, suppose that I bite the bullet and flash my firmware, can I put back the original one without problems or will it be lost forever?

-chronodekar

If it supports SNMP you could setup cacti to graph the usage that way.

 

[ViviTheMage]

A cisco managed switch could do this,per PORT (you'd have to know whose plugged in where) you could pick up an older 10/100 24-48 port for 150+ on ebay.

 

[drebo]

Set up SNMP on your workstations and monitor the NICs. You'll get your bandwidth utilization per system.

Also, worrying about the warranty of a $50 SOHO router is kind of silly. First off, they never come with advanced replacement warranties anyway, so if it goes bad you have the option of being down for a week or more or buying a new one anyway. Second, they're only $50. Keep a second, preconfigured one on hand in case the first goes bad. These are throw-away devices.

 

[Nothinman]

Sadly NetFlow isn't as ubiquitous as one would like and AFAIK there's no good, cheap NetFlow analysis tools either.

 

[kornphlake]

How are you going to separate intranet traffic monitoring from internet traffic in the logs? Will DD-WRT do this if the router is just acting as a switch? I'd think you would want the device acting as a DHCP server to be logging traffic.

 

[jlazzaro]

Sadly NetFlow isn't as ubiquitous as one would like and AFAIK there's no good, cheap NetFlow analysis tools either.

I am using the free version of Plixer Scrutinizer and have been blown away. Other than keeping only 24 hours worth of data, it's feature packed. It's so good in fact I almost feel guilty not paying for it

 

[Nothinman]

I am using the free version of Plixer Scrutinizer and have been blown away. Other than keeping only 24 hours worth of data, it's feature packed. It's so good in fact I almost feel guilty not paying for it

Yea, I think we've used it in the past and it seemed like the best, freely available tool. However, the 24hr limit is BS and limits it to "OMG there's a problem, WTF is happeing?!" instances. You can't do any real bandwidth monitoring with it.

 

[chronodekar]

This "NetFlow" sounds like a nice thing. I'm guessing that it requires some hardware support? To what I gather online, I need some "Cisco IOS" kind of devices for it and my rv042 doesn't seem to support it.

I went searching around for "Syslog" as that seems to be what my router supports and I found this - Kiwi Syslog Server

It shows me some graphs of syslog messages. From a network administrator point of view, what is this data supposed to mean ? (I'm learning) Any tutorial links or the like I could read?

-chronodekar

PS - also, what do the SNMP messages mean or stand for? (I did NOT understand the wikipedia entry)

 

[RadiclDreamer]

\
PS - also, what do the SNMP messages mean or stand for? (I did NOT understand the wikipedia entry)

Simple Network Management Protocol

 

[chronodekar]

Simple Network Management Protocol

Thanks, but that was not quite what I was looking for in an answer. Please permit me to rephrase my question,

What do people DO or use SNMP for on a network? :\ Or what information does a router spew out with it?

-chronodekar

 

[Nothinman]

It depends. Different devices have different capabilities and give different information via SNMP. I'm sure there's a standard MIB but I don't know the RFC number or anything. There's some things you can almost always assume will be there like uptime, CPU usage, memory usage, disk usage, various network interface statistics, etc.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Thanks, but that was not quite what I was looking for in an answer. Please permit me to rephrase my question,

What do people DO or use SNMP for on a network? :\ Or what information does a router spew out with it?

-chronodekar

Traffic stats per port, error logs etc